DOCSLIB.ORG

Doctor Zhivago: Russian Literature As a Tool of American Propaganda During the Cold War and the Role of the Vatican and Feltrinelli

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Doctor Zhivago: Russian Literature As a Tool of American Propaganda During the Cold War and the Role of the Vatican and Feltrinelli ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 6 ( 2017/2 ) DOCTOR ZHIVAGO: RUSSIAN LITERATURE AS A TOOL OF AMERICAN PROPAGANDA DURING THE COLD WAR AND THE ROLE OF THE VATICAN AND FELTRINELLI IDA LIBERA VALICENTI* Summary The goal of my contribution is to underline the role of the novel Doctor Zhivago by the Russian author Boris Pasternak during the Cold War. Particularly, I would like to point out how the novel and the Nobel Prize given to its author were used by the US intelligence as a “soft power” weapon against Soviet Union, with the collaboration of two Italians: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and The Vatican. Key Words: Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak, Nobel Prize, Feltrinelli, Vatican, CIA, US, URSS, Cold War, Soft power. During the second term of Eisenhower as President of the US, Doctor Zhivago, a novel focused on 1917 Russian Revolution and that was forbidden in the USSR, was used by the CIA to fight the Soviet enemy. The operation, whose result was the assignation of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak, was possible thanks both to the collaboration of the Italian intellectual and publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who first published Pasternak’s masterpiece in Europe, when it had not yet been released in the Soviet Union, and to the deliberate assistance of the Vatican.[1] CIA’s Doctor Zhivago project became part of a wider effort by the agency to introduce forbidden novels into the Eastern bloc countries, including books by George Orwell, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and Ernest Hemingway, to fight the Russian counterpart through literature, seen International Journal of Russian Studies, No. 6/2 ( July 2017 ) 187 as a soft power weapon to destabilize internal societies in the Soviet Bloc.[2] The term “soft power” means the ability of a political power to persuade, convince, attract and co-opt, through intangible resources such as “culture, values and the institutions of politics.” The term was coined in the early Nineties by Joseph S. Nye, Jr., who considered the world as a complex mechanism of interdependencies (soft power), through which the United States could improve its international image and strengthen its power.[3] The opposite of “soft power” is “hard power”, the traditional way to influence and rule with an active and physical interference. CIA files, that have been recently declassified and then published in the recent book The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book, highlight the great potential of the novel against Communist propaganda, according to CIA purposes.[4] The book written by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée underlines the use of the Nobel Prize Boris Pasternak by US Intelligence to spread a negative image of the Russian Revolution. Starting from the reading of the book we could ask what was in particular the role of Italian publisher Feltrinelli and of the Vatican in the CIA operation. If in the book by Finn and Couvée the role of Feltrinelli is pointed out several time, it is not possible to say the same for the role played by the Vatican, that is, instead, of a crucial importance. Due to this unjustified absence of the Vatican in the above mentioned contribution, my attention will firstly focus on Feltrinelli and then, in a wider way, on the Vatican, as essential components of the plan designed by CIA. In addition to The Zhivago Affair, another book, The novel (2007)[5] by the Russian researcher Ivan Tolstoy, deserves to be mentioned. In this essay, differently from Finn and Couvée, Tolstoy highlights not only the role of the Americans but also of the British intelligence in the plan of CIA who led the Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for his novelDoctor Zhivago in 1958.[6] My attention, then, will focus on the double role played by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and the Vatican, that in the game of the Cold War belonged to the two opposing blocs. While Feltrinelli was a member of the Italian Communist Party, the Vatican was a firm ally of the United States of America. However, Feltrinelli and the Vatican can be considered as the two extreme poles, the beginning of the plan and almost its ending, in which CIA operated in order to make Pasternak a Nobel Laureate. Feltrinelli unconsciously helped CIA to get in touch with Pasternak, while the Vatican disseminated and distributed the book among Russian Catholics.[7] It is interesting now to spend a few words on Feltrinelli’s figure as an intellectual. Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was not only an engaged party member, but he was a very rich man, a young multimillionaire from an old Italian business dynasty.[8] His field of expertise as a businessman was publishing, specializing his company in contemporary literature, especially from the Soviet Union. His talent-scout in Moscow, Sergio D’Angelo, an Italian Communist who used to work in that period at “Radio Mosca”, read a brief cultural article in a magazine, that announced the imminent publication of the first novel by the Russian poet Boris Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago.[9] In The Zhivago Affair, Finn and Couvée start their chronicles of the events exactly from D’Angelo’s discovery of the book written by the future Nobel Prize, as the prologue of the real affair.[10] Thanks to Valden Vlademirsky, a colleague from “Radio Moscow”, D’Angelo fails to meet Pasternak in his home in Peredelkino, a colony of Russian writers and poets, established by Maksim Gorki during the period of Stalin, to control the intellectual class.[11] Pasternak was surely aware of the dangers that he could get in giving the novel to the Italian literary agent, since the book had not been published yet in the Soviet Union. The publication in the USSR, indeed, took place only after 1989.[12] International Journal of Russian Studies, No. 6/2 ( July 2017 ) 188 It is important to understand now the reason why Pasternak’s masterpiece was considered so important both for the Soviet Union and the US.[13] The novel contained a strong humanistic message that highlighted the importance of individuality and the damage created by the collectivization promoted by the Russian Revolution. And then, would definitely put under a negative light the Revolution of the Bolsheviks in which the same Khrushchev actively participated.[14] Despite the recommendations of D’Angelo to safeguard Pasternak, once it arrived in the hands of Feltrinelli the book was translated and published in 1957. There is now an important and essential question: if, as said above, Feltrinelli was an active member of the Italian Communist party, how was it possible that he decided to publish a book that was clearly against the Soviet regime and the very idea of Soviet Revolution? We have to consider some elements. 1957 is a crucial year in the history of international communism. The invasion of Budapest in 1956 had created divisions within the Communist bloc between those who agreed with the intervention of the Red Army in Hungary and others who saw this invasion as the end of the Communist ideals. Iconic was, for example, the French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre who cut his membership card to the International.[15] The Italian Communist Party was at that time the largest Communist party in the world outside the Soviet bloc. Its secretary Palmiro Togliatti was very close to the USSR, and due to this reason he did not take distance from the Soviet armed intervention against Imre Nagy, the Hungarian politician who tried to emancipate Hungary from Moscow. But, at the same time, many other members of the Italian party began to break their relations with the CPUS. Among these intellectuals there was also Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who probably wanted to show that he could be a communist without being dependent on the Soviet communism through the publication of the novel by Pasternak.[16] The publication of Doctor Zhivago by Feltrinelli offers the opportunity to the CIA to hatch the plot that brought Boris Pasternak to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.[17] Pasternak’s message, as it was said before, focused on the respect of the human being and the right to have a private life. According to the American Intelligence, it posed an essential challenge to the ethics of the individual sacrifice in the Soviet communist system. The novel tells the partly autobiographical story of a Russian doctor and poet, Yuri Zhivago, during the turbulent decades before, during and after the 1917 revolution. He is already married when he falls in love with another woman, Lara - who is married herself, to a committed Bolshevik - and the plot follows the progress of their doomed relationship, as their lives are caught up in the monumental events of the time. Shifting our attention on CIA Doctor Zhivago plan, we follow the historical events as they can be read in the official documents,[18] in the book by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée, who for years have dealt with the case, and in the book by Ivan Tolstoy. The idea of the CIA was not only the assignment of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak, but also the distribution of the novel among Russians. First of all, it is important to underline that, in order to win a Nobel, the manuscript of a candidate writer should be published in its original language. In this particularly case, CIA was able to catch of the forbidden manuscript in its original Cyrillic version, in a flight. As reported by Tolstoy, the plane was forced to stop in Malta for few hours, due to fictional and fake technical controls and CIA had the chance to take photos of each pictures.[19] The novel was then published, as pictures, without any editing work, just in time for the assignment of the Nobel that year.[20] At this point, it is important the role of the Vatican, that is surprisingly not so much underlined in an accurate book such as the one by Finn and Couvée.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Meat: a Novel
    University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Faculty Publications 2019 Meat: A Novel Sergey Belyaev Boris Pilnyak Ronald D. LeBlanc University of New Hampshire, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/faculty_pubs Recommended Citation Belyaev, Sergey; Pilnyak, Boris; and LeBlanc, Ronald D., "Meat: A Novel" (2019). Faculty Publications. 650. https://scholars.unh.edu/faculty_pubs/650 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sergey Belyaev and Boris Pilnyak Meat: A Novel Translated by Ronald D. LeBlanc Table of Contents Acknowledgments . III Note on Translation & Transliteration . IV Meat: A Novel: Text and Context . V Meat: A Novel: Part I . 1 Meat: A Novel: Part II . 56 Meat: A Novel: Part III . 98 Memorandum from the Authors . 157 II Acknowledgments I wish to thank the several friends and colleagues who provided me with assistance, advice, and support during the course of my work on this translation project, especially those who helped me to identify some of the exotic culinary items that are mentioned in the opening section of Part I. They include Lynn Visson, Darra Goldstein, Joyce Toomre, and Viktor Konstantinovich Lanchikov. Valuable translation help with tricky grammatical constructions and idiomatic expressions was provided by Dwight and Liya Roesch, both while they were in Moscow serving as interpreters for the State Department and since their return stateside.
    [Show full text]
  • Boris Pasternak - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series Boris Pasternak - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Boris Pasternak(10 February 1890 - 30 May 1960) Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Furthermore, Pasternak's theatrical translations of Goethe, Schiller, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and William Shakespeare remain deeply popular with Russian audiences. Outside Russia, Pasternak is best known for authoring Doctor Zhivago, a novel which spans the last years of Czarist Russia and the earliest days of the Soviet Union. Banned in the USSR, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, an event which both humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the midst of a massive campaign against him by both the KGB and the Union of Soviet Writers, Pasternak reluctantly agreed to decline the Prize. In his resignation letter to the Nobel Committee, Pasternak stated the reaction of the Soviet State was the only reason for his decision. By the time of his death from lung cancer in 1960, the campaign against Pasternak had severely damaged the international credibility of the U.S.S.R. He remains a major figure in Russian literature to this day. Furthermore, tactics pioneered by Pasternak were later continued, expanded, and refined by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet dissidents. <b>Early Life</b> Pasternak was born in Moscow on 10 February, (Gregorian), 1890 (Julian 29 January) into a wealthy Russian Jewish family which had been received into the Russian Orthodox Church.
    [Show full text]
  • Russian Museums Visit More Than 80 Million Visitors, 1/3 of Who Are Visitors Under 18
    Moscow 4 There are more than 3000 museums (and about 72 000 museum workers) in Russian Moscow region 92 Federation, not including school and company museums. Every year Russian museums visit more than 80 million visitors, 1/3 of who are visitors under 18 There are about 650 individual and institutional members in ICOM Russia. During two last St. Petersburg 117 years ICOM Russia membership was rapidly increasing more than 20% (or about 100 new members) a year Northwestern region 160 You will find the information aboutICOM Russia members in this book. All members (individual and institutional) are divided in two big groups – Museums which are institutional members of ICOM or are represented by individual members and Organizations. All the museums in this book are distributed by regional principle. Organizations are structured in profile groups Central region 192 Volga river region 224 Many thanks to all the museums who offered their help and assistance in the making of this collection South of Russia 258 Special thanks to Urals 270 Museum creation and consulting Culture heritage security in Russia with 3M(tm)Novec(tm)1230 Siberia and Far East 284 © ICOM Russia, 2012 Organizations 322 © K. Novokhatko, A. Gnedovsky, N. Kazantseva, O. Guzewska – compiling, translation, editing, 2012 [email protected] www.icom.org.ru © Leo Tolstoy museum-estate “Yasnaya Polyana”, design, 2012 Moscow MOSCOW A. N. SCRiAbiN MEMORiAl Capital of Russia. Major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation center of Russia and the continent MUSEUM Highlights: First reference to Moscow dates from 1147 when Moscow was already a pretty big town.
    [Show full text]
  • Isaak Babel," Anonymous, "He Died for Art," Nesweek (July 27, 1964)
    European Writers: The Twentieth Century. Ed. George Stade. Vol. 11. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983. Pp. 1885-1914. Babel's extant output: movie scripts, early short Isaac Babel fiction, journalistic sketches, one translation, and a few later stories that remained unpublished in Babel's lifetime (they were considered offensive either to the (1894 – 1940) party line or the censor's sense of public delicacy). His most famous work, the cycle of short stories Gregory Freidin and vignettes, Konarmiia (Red Cavalry), was first published in a separate edition in 1926. It dealt with the experiences of the Russo-Polish War of 1920 as (A version of this essay in Critical Biography was seen through the bespectacled eyes of a Russian published in European Writer of the Twentieth Jewish intellectual working, as Babel himself had Century [NY: Scribners, 1990]) done, for the newspaper of the red Cossack army. This autobiographical aura played a key rôle in the success and popularity of the cycle. The thirty three jewel-like pieces, strung together to form the first Isaac Babel (1894-1940) was, perhaps, the first edition of Red Cavalry, were composed in a short Soviet prose writer to achieve a truly stellar stature in period of time, between the summer of 1923 and the Russia, to enjoy a wide-ranging international beginning of 1925, and together constitute Babel's reputation as a grand master of the short story,1 and lengthiest work of fiction (two more pieces would be to continue to influence—directly through his own added subsequently). They also represent his most work as well as through criticism and scholarship— innovative and daring technical accomplishment.
    [Show full text]
  • Doctor Zhivago1
    ACTA SLAVICA ESTONICA VI. Studia Russica Helsingiensia et Tartuensia XIV. Russian National Myth in Transition. Tartu, 2014 ETHNICITY AND HISTORY IN BORIS PASTERNAK’S DOCTOR ZHIVAGO1 KONSTANTIN POLIVANOV The events of Russian history and society in the first half of the 20th century were often viewed by both contemporaries and historiographers from the per- spective of Russia’s position between West and East, or in relation to Russia’s internal problems arising from ethnic and religious differences. After the revo- lution, Soviet authorities declared the equality of all nationalities populating the Russian Empire and the abolishment of any discrimination on the basis of eth- nicity. These declarations were repeated throughout the Soviet Union’s 74-year history, despite the deportation of entire peoples in the 1940s and the deploy- ment of the state’s anti-Semitic campaign at the end of the 1940s, which dragged on in various forms until the end of the 1980s. Correspondingly, in Doctor Zhivago, problems related to the “ethnic question” both define the novel’s historical context (1945–1955) and become a subject of discussion and reflection for the characters. The revolutionary movement in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century is shown in Pasternak’s novel not only through the prism of the political parties, worker’s unions (the railroad strike), and youth (“young men shoot”), but also in “ethnic colors”. Thus, the wife of a terrorist serving hard labor and mother of one of Zhivago’s friends, Innokenty Dudorov, is “a Georgian princess of the Eristov family, a spoiled and beautiful woman, still young and always infatuated with <…> rebellions, rebels, extremist theories” [DZ: 18].
    [Show full text]
  • Babel' in Context a Study in Cultural Identity B O R D E R L I N E S : R U S S I a N А N D E a S T E U R O P E a N J E W I S H S T U D I E S
    Babel' in Context A Study in Cultural Identity B o r d e r l i n e s : r u s s i a n а n d e a s t e u r o p e a n J e w i s h s t u d i e s Series Editor: Harriet Murav—University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Editorial board: Mikhail KrutiKov—University of Michigan alice NakhiMovsKy—Colgate University David Shneer—University of Colorado, Boulder anna ShterNsHis—University of Toronto Babel' in Context A Study in Cultural Identity Ef r a i m Sic hEr BOSTON / 2012 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalog record for this book as available from the Library of Congress. Copyright © 2012 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved Effective July 29, 2016, this book will be subject to a CC-BY-NC license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Other than as provided by these licenses, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or displayed by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the publisher or as permitted by law. ISBN 978-1-936235-95-7 Cloth ISBN 978-1-61811-145-6 Electronic Book design by Ivan Grave Published by Academic Studies Press in 2012 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com C o n t e n t s Note on References and Translations 8 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 1 / Isaak Babelʹ: A Brief Life 29 2 / Reference and Interference 85 3 / Babelʹ, Bialik, and Others 108 4 / Midrash and History: A Key to the Babelesque Imagination 129 5 / A Russian Maupassant 151 6 / Babelʹ’s Civil War 170 7 / A Voyeur on a Collective Farm 208 Bibliography of Works by Babelʹ and Recommended Reading 228 Notes 252 Index 289 Illustrations Babelʹ with his father, Nikolaev 1904 32 Babelʹ with his schoolmates 33 Benia Krik (still from the film, Benia Krik, 1926) 37 S.
    [Show full text]
  • Uzbek: War, Friendship of the Peoples, and the Creation of Soviet Uzbekistan, 1941-1945
    Making Ivan-Uzbek: War, Friendship of the Peoples, and the Creation of Soviet Uzbekistan, 1941-1945 By Charles David Shaw A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Yuri Slezkine, Chair Professor Victoria Frede-Montemayor Professor Victoria E. Bonnell Summer 2015 Abstract Making Ivan-Uzbek: War, Friendship of the Peoples, and the Creation of Soviet Uzbekistan, 1941-1945 by Charles David Shaw Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Yuri Slezkine, Chair This dissertation addresses the impact of World War II on Uzbek society and contends that the war era should be seen as seen as equally transformative to the tumultuous 1920s and 1930s for Soviet Central Asia. It argues that via the processes of military service, labor mobilization, and the evacuation of Soviet elites and common citizens that Uzbeks joined the broader “Soviet people” or sovetskii narod and overcame the prejudices of being “formerly backward” in Marxist ideology. The dissertation argues that the army was a flexible institution that both catered to national cultural (including Islamic ritual) and linguistic difference but also offered avenues for assimilation to become Ivan-Uzbeks, part of a Russian-speaking, pan-Soviet community of victors. Yet as the war wound down the reemergence of tradition and violence against women made clear the limits of this integration. The dissertation contends that the war shaped the contours of Central Asian society that endured through 1991 and created the basis for thinking of the “Soviet people” as a nation in the 1950s and 1960s.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 / Isaak Babelʹ: a Brief Life
    1 / Isaak Babelʹ: A Brief Life Beginnings Neither Babelʹ’s “Autobiography,” written in 1924 to gain ideological credentials as a “Soviet” writer, nor the so-called autobiographical stories, which Babelʹ intended to collect under the title Story of My Dovecote (История моей голубятни) strictly relate to the facts, but they are illuminating for the construction of the writer’s identity as someone who hid his highly individual personality behind the mask of a Soviet writer who had broken with his bourgeois Jewish past. Babelʹ’s father, for example, was not an impoverished shopkeeper, but a dealer in agricultural machinery, though not a particularly successful businessman. Emmanuel Itskovich, born in Belaia Tserkovʹ, was a typical merchant who had worked his way up and set up his own business.1 Babelʹ’s mother, Fenia (neé Shvekhvelʹ), as Nathalie Babel has testified, was quite unlike the Rachel of the Childhood stories. About his book of Childhood stories, Story of My Dovecote, Babelʹ wrote his family: “The subjects of the stories are all taken from my childhood, but, of course, there is much that has been made up and changed. When the book is finished, it will be clear why I had to do all that.”2 But then the fantasies of the untruthful boy in the story “In the Basement” (“В подвале”) do inject a kind of poetic truth into the real lives of his crazy grandfather, a disgraced rabbi from Belaia Tserkovʹ, and his drunken uncle Simon-Wolf. Despite the necessary post-revolutionary revision of biography carried out by many writers, nothing could be more natural than Hebrew, the Bible, and Talmud being taught at home by a melamed, or part-time tutor.
    [Show full text]
  • Maria Langleben on the Rhythmic Composition of Doctor Zhivago
    Maria Langleben on the rhythmic composition of Doctor Zhivago, Ireneusz Szarycz's comparison of Siniavskii and Vonnegut, Agata Krzychylkiewicz on the clash of genera- tions in recent Russian literature, Elena Krasnostchekova on Vladimir Makanin's artistic evolution, Harold D. Baker on Bitov's Pushkin House, Ryan on Sasha Sokolov's Pali- sandriya, Eugene Zeb Kozlowski on multiple comic coding in the Strugatskiis' Monday Begins on Saturday, Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy on Tatyana Tolstaia's "The Heavenly Flame," Valentina Polukhina on doubles in Joseph Brodsky's poetry, and Hen- rietta Mondry on nationalism in recent Russian literary criticism. While all are well- supported and worthy scholarly contributions, and in some cases fascinating reading as well, I would particularly like to draw attention to three outstanding pieces on Russian post-modernism. Nina Kolesnikoft's "Metafictional Strategies of Russian Post-modem Prose" outlines tactics for foregrounding story elements "through four possible tech- niques: over-abundance and exaggeration, absence or reduction, eccentric execution, or overt self-consciousness" (p. 281 ), citing numerous examples of each from a wide variety of writers. Alexander Genis's "Borders and Metamorphoses: Viktor Pelevin in the Con- text of Post-Soviet Literature" offers cogent and suggestive characteristics of several other writers, then returning to its focus on Pelevin's works and style. Mark Lipovetsky's "On the Nature of Russian Post-modernism" gives a broadly informed survey of critical and creative writings from and about post-modernism, with reference to its antecedents in Russian or Soviet art and literary history and to Latin American authors. Genis's article is translated with only occasional infelicities by Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, while Lipovet- sky's is rendered into supple and idiomatic English by Eliot Borenstein; in both cases, the aesthetic pleasures of the text balance the intellectual value of the authors' work.
    [Show full text]
  • Moscow As the Main Heroine in Pasternak's Novel Doctor Zhivago?
    Intercultural Communication Studies XXV: 1 (2016) VAAGAN Moscow as the Main Heroine in Pasternak’s Novel Doctor Zhivago? Robert W. VAAGAN Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway Abstract: In 2008, Robert N. St. Clair and Wei Song published a book entitled The Many Layers of Culture Within Each City, applying their analytical framework to case studies of Harbin, Rio de Janeiro, Venice and Lisbon (St. Clair & Song, 2008). Invited to write a preface to their book, it struck me that a number of other cities could have been included. This influenced me to revisit an earlier text I had written in 1995 on the Russian writer Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) and his novel Doctor Zhivago, which won him the Nobel Prize in literature in 1958. My text was concerned with Pasternak’s literary prowess, especially his stylistic use of anthropomorphisms which are so typical of his style, and which infuse life into the prose and poetry parts of this great novel (Vaagan, 1996). But there were also many other ideas I had to set aside, including the role of the capital Moscow as a possible main character or heroine in the novel. Few would question the existence of many layers of culture in Moscow with its complex history, but is there enough justification to consider the city as the main heroine of the novel? Keywords: Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Nobel Prize, Moscow as heroine, layers of culture 1. Introduction In October 1958, the Soviet writer Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel prize in literature for his epic novel Doctor Zhivago.
    [Show full text]
  • The Final Campaign Against Boris Pilnyak: the Controversy Over Meat: a Novel (1936)
    University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Scholarship Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 2018 The Final Campaign Against Boris Pilnyak: The Controversy over Meat: A Novel (1936) Ronald D. LeBlanc University of New Hampshire, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/lang_facpub Recommended Citation LeBlanc, Ronald D., "The Final Campaign Against Boris Pilnyak: The Controversy over Meat: A Novel (1936)" (2018). Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Scholarship. 453. https://scholars.unh.edu/lang_facpub/453 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Scholarship by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Final Campaign Against Boris Pilnyak: The Controversy over Meat: A Novel (1936) “Pilnyak is misleading and deceiving us.” Stalin, 19261 “Pilnyak can depict only the backside of our revolution.” Stalin, 19292 “Whatever happened to Boris Pilnyak?” If this question had been asked near the end of 1937, when the once popular writer suddenly disappeared from public view, most of his Soviet contemporaries would probably not have been able to answer the query with any degree of certainty. Pilnyak’s name had been very much in the news as he withstood two vicious campaigns of vilification launched against him in the late 1920s, when the official Soviet press vehemently attacked him for writing what they considered slanderous, if not treasonous, works of prose fiction that advanced blatantly “counter-revolutionary” and “anti-Soviet” sentiments.
    [Show full text]
  • And Post-Soviet Literature and Culture
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Russia Eternal: Recalling The Imperial Era In Late- And Post-Soviet Literature And Culture Pavel Khazanov University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Eastern European Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, European History Commons, and the European Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Khazanov, Pavel, "Russia Eternal: Recalling The Imperial Era In Late- And Post-Soviet Literature And Culture" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2894. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2894 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2894 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Russia Eternal: Recalling The Imperial Era In Late- And Post-Soviet Literature And Culture Abstract The return of Tsarist buildings, narratives and symbols has been a prominent facet of social life in post- Soviet Russia. My dissertation aims to explain this phenomenon and its meaning by tracking contemporary Russia’s cultural memory of the Imperial era. By close-reading both popular and influential cultural texts, as well as analyzing their conditions of production and reception, I show how three generations of Russian cultural elites from the 1950s until today have used Russia’s past to fight present- day political battles, and outline how the cultural memory of the Imperial epoch continues to inform post- Soviet Russian leaders and their mainstream detractors. Chapters One and Two situate the origin of Russian culture’s current engagement with the pre-Revolutionary era in the social dynamic following Stalin’s death in 1953.
    [Show full text]